LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Elon Musk visited China at the start of this week. His company, Tesla, both makes and sells electric cars there. And Tesla announced a plan to use a self-driving system. Our colleague Steve Inskeep was also in China and saw some of Tesla’s competition at the Beijing auto show.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Everything is big in China, especially convention centers. And even by that scale, this is pretty big. This is like the Super Bowl, except for cars.

The Beijing auto show drew so many people in so many cars and buses that we had to get out of our car and walk the last half mile to get there. Cars filled the convention hall, both the first and second floors.

TAYLOR HANEY, BYLINE: There’s a car in a suspended glass cube.

INSKEEP: That’s our producer, Taylor Haney.

I think there are a lot of brands here that a lot of Americans will not have heard of like iCAR or Dongfeng Motor, as well as more familiar global brands like Honda, and over here’s a sign for an emerging global brand, BYD, which briefly was the largest seller of electric cars in the world, surpassing Tesla.

INSKEEP: It was media day at the auto show, and BYD was unveiling new models. So many hundreds of people crowded around their stage that we couldn’t even see, but no problem since the unveiling was also playing on 20-foot video screens. Our producer Aowen Cao translated as BYD leaders pulled the sheets off the cars.

AOWEN CAO: And these are not the only big model we will launch in this auto show. I have a surprise for you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: Dramatic shots of a red vehicle.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: There it is, a red sports car.

When we got a better look, it was a four-door hatchback but with sporty design and a tail fin. They referred to it as a hot hatch, a car for young consumers.

CAO: And please take a picture, media friends.

INSKEEP: When the BYD presentation ended, we had a plan to meet someone who could make sense of all this.

He said to meet him at the Starbucks in here somewhere, and there is the telltale green sign.

The convention center had a built-in Starbucks jammed with customers, outside of which was a Starbucks trailer for the overflow. In other words, the Starbucks had a Starbucks. And behind the trailer, we found Tu Le sitting at a table.

Hello.

TU LE: Hey, Steve.

INSKEEP: Hey.

LE: Nice to meet you.

INSKEEP: Nice to meet you, too.

LE: I’m just resting my dogs, man.

INSKEEP: Well, that’s OK. It’s quite a dramatic day.

Tu Le is an American who writes a newsletter called Sino Auto Insights. Now, when China’s BYD surpassed Tesla in electric vehicle sales, that was just temporary, when Tesla had a bad month. But when you add in hybrid cars that use both gas and electric, BYD dominates a category that China calls new energy vehicles.

LE: Currently, BYD is the largest NEV-maker in the world. Their products are pretty significant, very aggressively priced. And their tentacles are starting to reach to a lot of markets.

INSKEEP: BYD – the initials stand for Build Your Dreams – is not quite 30 years old. Tu Le spotted the founder here at the auto show.

LE: I took a picture of Wang Chuanfu.

INSKEEP: The founder originally made batteries, not cars, which gave Wang Chuanfu an advantage when he branched into EVs.

LE: Wang Chuanfu bought a bankrupt Chinese car company, which is now BYD. And because they cut their teeth on the technology company making batteries for companies like Apple, because they are able to fab their own chips and make their own batteries for their own vehicles, every other car company wants to be BYD right now, just because they control so much of their costs.

INSKEEP: As we talked, I told Tu Le that I first did a story about BYD seven years ago. At that time, it seemed that Tesla made high-quality cars while BYD was a little lower quality and cheaper.

LE: So I would argue that Tesla has never really been too concerned about their vehicle quality.

INSKEEP: (Laughter).

LE: And I think you’re being kind. Seven years ago, BYD vehicles were trash. But just like everything else in the China market, if you can’t move fast, then you’re not going to survive very long.

INSKEEP: In a brutally competitive environment, the quality of the cars has gone up. Tu Le grew up in Detroit, which means he grew up with the Big Three automakers. His dad worked for one.

LE: He was 27 1/2 years of GM. My first job was at GM. My sister retired two years ago from GM after 35 years. Her husband was 30 years at GM. A brother that currently works at Stellantis.

INSKEEP: And when he talks about the auto industry, you can hear this American rooting for the home team. Though he says, in electric vehicles, his home team is falling behind the likes of BYD.

LE: GM’s falling all over itself. Ford’s falling all over itself, building 10,000 EVs a month. They’re at 350,000 a month. Their target is to get 4 million this year. So the operational efficiency it takes to do that is off the charts.

INSKEEP: He sees the cars at the Beijing auto show as a warning to American carmakers. In a global market, they will need to improve their game to keep up.

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